Tag Archives: Content strategy

How to optimize your Adsense ad placements for mobile users

This is the final guest post from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Every year more people are using their phones and devices to browse web pages. In 2013, mobile made up only 17% of web traffic. In 2016, this number has risen to over 38%. Within the next couple of years, mobile traffic will easily surpass 50%.

This is why you need to take time to optimize your AdSense ads for mobile traffic. Although you can easily grab a responsive AdSense ad unit, there are more ways to optimize your ad units for mobile. It may be the easiest way, but I’ve found that the easy way usually does not always produce the best results. I’ve tested the responsive ad units on my blogs against manual optimization, and the results were staggering.

The manual optimization of my ads produced a 54% increase in my AdSense revenue.

Here’s what I learned from the tests I ran:

#1 A large mobile banner at the top of the page earned the most money on my site

The highest producing location was below the title of a post and above the first paragraph. It’s important to know that AdSense amended their policy on ads above the fold on mobile devices, and you can no longer use the 300x250 ad above the fold on mobile.

#2 Hide the sidebar ads in tablets and mobile

The sidebar is going to be pushed down to the bottom of the post when it is viewed in mobile. This is essentially banishing any ads in the sidebar to no man’s land. Most premium WordPress themes will allow you to turn off ad spots in the sidebar. This will allow you to drop in an additional AdSense ad into the post to get maximum monetization from mobile.

#3 The best ad grouping was top, middle, and bottom

Out of all the mobile ad groupings, this one easily produced the most revenue for me. The grouping was made up of three 250x250 ads. The first ad was below the title and above the first paragraph. The second ad was placed after the 6th paragraph of the post. The final ad was placed at the end of the post.

In addition to mobile optimization, I applied four AdSense optimization strategies, which resulted in an overall revenue increase of close to 300%. Whether you are making $500/month or $5000/month, a 300% increase can make a huge impact on your yearly earnings.

Go here to read all of my “5 AdSense Optimization Strategies that Will Increase Your Earnings.”

Posted By
Brandon Gaille

Brandon Gaille is an AdSense publisher. You can learn more about Brandon at BrandonGaille.com and listen to his popular blogging podcast, The Blog Millionaire.

If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Source: Inside AdSense

How to earn more money with AdSense by decreasing your bounce rate

This is the fourth of five guest posts from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Google Analytics defines bounce rate as the percentage of single-page sessions, which essentially means the people that left your site after seeing only a single page. When your bounce rate is high, it also means that your AdSense ads may not be seen by a large percentage of your audience.

Over the years, I've researched this topic many times over in an effort to constantly decrease the bounce rate of my sites and my clients’ sites. Through countless hours of A/B testing and deep analytics research, I was able to identify 25 tactics that consistently reduced the bounce rate.

The great thing about most of these tactics is that they usually only take a matter of minutes to incorporate, and you can start seeing results the next day.

#1 Do not use more than 7 sentences per paragraph

You never want to block too much text together. One really long paragraph can easily overwhelm your visitors and lead them to hitting the back button.

Most bloggers write their posts on a desktop or laptop computer. From a computer, the occasional 12 to 15 sentence paragraph does not look too intimidating. However, over 50% of my blog visitors are using their phones to read the posts on my site. On a phone, these long paragraphs will fill up the entire screen and add to your bounce rate.

I like to break up my paragraphs into different sizes. This can make the text of a post visually stimulating, which can turn scanners into readers.

Using an occasional single sentence paragraph will speed up the flow of article and add some nice white space.

#2 Keep your column width between 700 and 800 pixels

There have been many big name bloggers that have been considering ditching the sidebar. Although the sidebar does not get as many clicks as it once did, this is largely due to the increase in mobile traffic.

A post without a sidebar will have a column width well beyond 800 pixels. This is going to make your content look very long on a desktop computer. The ideal width for engagement is 700 pixels, which will allow between 80 and 90 characters per line.

Smashing Magazine did a study on the typographic design patterns in websites. When they looked at a segment of websites with the highest engagement, they found the majority of these sites had between 75 and 90 characters per line.

Source of image: Smashing Magazine

#3 Organize your content with headers and sub-headers

Based on reviewing heat maps of million and millions of page views, I’ve found that visitors of blog posts are made up of a mix of readers and scanners. To be precise, the results showed that 40% are readers and 60% are scanners. The readers start by reading the introduction paragraph, and the scanners scroll through the entire post. The scanners consistently stop scrolling to read each header and sub-header.

For the readers, most bloggers are pulling them into the post with a great introduction. However, the vast majority fail to create compelling headers. The easiest type of post to break into headers is the list post. For example, “13 Habits that Lead to Success.”

Each habit should be turned into a bold header and be able to stand alone as its own title. The goal here is to create thirteen compelling titles. Each title is designed to grab the reader’s attention and drive them into reading that section.

If you’ve enjoyed these three tips to decrease your bounce rate, go here to read all of the “25 Proven Ways to Decrease Your Bounce Rate.”

Posted By
Brandon Gaille

Source: Inside AdSense

How to create better blog titles that can drive more traffic to your ads

This is the third of five guest posts from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Over the past three years, I’ve crafted titles for over 5,000 blog posts and have received over 58 million unique visitors to date. With that many titles and that much traffic, it’s allowed me to identify what types of titles get the most traffic.

The title of your page or blog post will play one of the largest roles in how much traffic you receive. From my extensive experience, a really great title can move your blog post dis and increase the number of social shares by over 300%.

The bottom line is… If you fail to write a compelling title that gets people to click, then your post is doomed to wallow in mediocrity.

Here are a few title optimization tactics that have proven to drive the most traffic.

#1 Place a number at the beginning of your title

If you have a list formatted post, then you need to be using numbered titles every single time. Titles that begin with numbers are proving to drive traffic. This is largely due to the increased consumption of users reading list posts more than any other type of blog post. A list post typically has anywhere from seven to forty key points, which are listed out numerically.
This makes it really easy for anyone to scan through the big takeaways and decide whether to dive deeper into the article. When people see the number 13 at the beginning of the title, they know they can scan through all 13 key points in a matter of seconds.

A numbered title paired with a list post will drive more clicks to your post and list style posts have one of the highest engagement rates. Posts with more clicks and higher engagement often are rewarded by becoming more discoverable to users.

Here are a couple of examples of numbered blog titles:

11 Tools to Create Share-Worthy Content
17 Incredible Social Media Statistics

I recommend crafting numbered blog post titles for more than half of your posts.

A Conductor study on headline preferences also backs up what I’ve found to be true on my blog.

blog headline statistics numbered titles

#2 The odd number gets 20% more clicks than the even number

Although no one has figured out exactly why this happens, the odd numbered titles get more clicks than the even numbered titles. Here’s an example.
Odd Numbered Title: 11 Keys to Earning More Money on Adsense
Even Numbered Title: 12 Types of Ads that Convert

Before you hit publish on the blog post titled, “8 Crazy Ways to Double Your Ad Revenue,” take a moment to either add one more tip or remove the least valuable tip. This will allow you to capitalize on the extra twenty percent of clicks by having an odd numbered title.

Learn more about creating better blog titles from my blog and read all of the “17 Ways to Create Catchy Blog Titles That Drive Traffic.”

Posted By
Brandon Gaille

Source: Inside AdSense

Put your users first with the four S’: Speed, Scroll, Style, Simple

We’re all consumers of web content. Yet as content creators it can be easy to forget what we need as users. But don’t worry, you’ve got this, and we’ve got you covered with just four S’.

If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up today and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

1. Speed

We all know how frustrating it is when a page takes forever to load. We twiddle our thumbs and look from side to side. And after just three seconds, we bounce.

But somehow publishers aren’t responding to this primal need that we all know as users.

According to Google's research from the Mobile Speed Matters report, the average load time for mobile sites across the web is 19 seconds. This is a LONG time. Usain Bolt can run 200m in 19.9s - think of what your users can do with a tap and a swipe.

But how does this impact me? Well, the report also states that…

53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Publishers whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds earn up to 2x more mobile ad revenue than those whose sites load in 19 seconds.

By now we think you’re sold on speed. So what’s next?

Understand your site’s speed with these resources

Consider one of the following quick fixes

Get our mobile web speed toolkit and...

Measure your site’s performance
Assess the different components impacting speed
Prioritize the order your site loads
Test, remeasure and repeat to improve your site speed

2. Scroll

The magic scroll. It’s an infinite, endless, perfectly loaded stream of content. There’s no need to click, to wait for a page to load, to navigate to that tiny ‘next’ with your giant thumb. It’s all right here, content, just waiting for you to consume it.

There are, of course, a few caveats before developing an infinite scroll. Like almost everything online, this isn’t a one size fits all solution.

Infinite scroll is great for ...

UGC publishers with constantly evolving content - think Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest.
Sites with lengthy articles or tutorials. No one wants to click ‘more’ or ‘page 2’ anymore. It’s just too dang hard.
Publishers using a slideshow with pagination. Consider a lazy loaded infinite scroll instead. Users love it.
Publishers considering mobile first (aren’t we all?!).

Watch out for …

Crawler errors & SEO impact and check out this article for creating a search friendly infinite scroll.

3. Style

Style should never be an afterthought. You and your users want to interact with something that looks good and feels good.

There are two primary components to style: content style & ad style.

First: Content Style

Great websites are able to maintain a consistent style across pages and platforms. Consistency gives users a sense of familiarity when interacting with your content.

Choose a color scheme and stick to it
Choose a layout and stick to it
Choose a theme and stick to it

We can’t stress this enough - stick to it.

As the industry continues to migrate towards a mobile first perspective, consistency across device types and platforms becomes increasingly important. Responsive web design enables your site to adapt to various device sizes without changing the overall look and feel or compromising user experience.

If you're up for the challenge, check out more on responsive design.

Second: Ad Style

In the internet of yesteryear it was nearly impossible to monetize without stripping a site of what made it beautiful. The good news? It’s 2016 and now you have the ability to make a profit and maintain your site’s style.

When implementing ads think about what makes sense for you and your users.

Consider responsive ads that automatically adapt to the user’s screen size
See if native ads are right for your site. If so, you can modify to match the look and feel of your site
Add matched content units, allowing your users to interact with more relevant content

Here's a sample of a native ad design.

Most importantly use ads to complement the content of your site. Since content is king, it’s important to ensure that you give your users what they're looking for in a format that’s easy to find and navigate, this includes the ads on your site.

Place ads at natural breaks or where the user’s attention may have waned. Not only will this improve user experience but it also may encourage a higher CTR and increased audience engagement.

4. Simple

Keep it simple, folks.

This rule underlines most everything that is targeted towards consumers, but it is even more important for a mobile first audience.

When it comes to consuming digital content, we’re a generation of hungry hippos. We want headlines, snippets, concise and clear information. We want minimalist design with streamlined content and easy navigation.

Tips on keeping it simple

Make it touch friendly. What’s easier than that?
Bullet points make your content easily consumable
Be brief in sign-ups. If your site requires users to sign-up or sign-in, keep input requirements to a minimum or consider adding a Google sign-in option to speed up the process

So there you have it; the four S’ of user experience: speed, scroll, style, simple. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up today and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Posted by: Sarah Hornsey, from the AdSense team

Source: Inside AdSense

Increase your earnings by using the right keyword research techniques

This is the second of five guest posts from AdSense publisher Brandon Gaille. Brandon has built his small business marketing blog, BrandonGaille.com, to over 2 million monthly visitors in less than three years. He’s featured as our guest blogger to share insights and tips from his personal blogging experience to help AdSense publishers grow earnings. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Last month, my blog received a little bit over 1.7 million visitors that originated from Google organic search. More than 95% of this traffic came from long tailed keywords.

If you do not know what a long tailed keyword is, then here’s a crash course. In keyword research, there are two primary types of keywords:

#1 Head Terms

These are your one and two word phrases that get loads of searches on Google. A few examples would be cars, credit score, and real estate. They are phrases that are very broad and are usually a top level category.

#2 Long Tail Terms

Then you have the long tail phrases that are made up of three words or more. A few examples of long tailed terms would be; red convertible sports cars, how to improve a bad credit score, and luxury real estate in upper New York. These terms are more descriptive and the searcher is usually closer to making a buying decision.

If you are just looking at the top 10,000 most searched phrases, then you will see mostly header terms. However, as you can see in the chart below, the top 10,000 searched phrases only make up 18.5% of all searches. The long tail terms make up over 70%.

long-tail-keyword-statistics-total-google-traffic

Additionally, Search Engine Watch published the results of a Conductor study, which found that long tailed traffic converted to sales at a rate of 250% greater than head terms.

I always tell the students of my online course that the battle for Google traffic is won with deep keyword research. It really is no different than gold prospecting. You have to dig through miles of dirt and rock to find the keyword phrases that are worth their weight in gold.

Here are the five keyword research tactics that will make your Google Analytics look like a hockey stick:

#1 Target keyword phrases that your domain name can rank for

If your website is CNN.com, then you can write about anything you want. The reason why is because their domain authority is 94 out of 100. Domain authority is a scoring system, created by Moz, that is based upon the link profile of each domain name. The more quality links you have, the higher your score is.

Having the luxury of managing over 100 blogs of my own and my clients, I was able to statistically identify what type of keyword phrases (based on number of Google results) different domain authorities can effectively rank for on Google.

When you type in a phrase to Google it will come back with a number of results. The number of results shows how many pages and posts are competing for that particular phrase. The higher the number, the harder it is to rank high enough to get traffic.

Here is the breakdown of what different domain authority sites can rank for.

Domain Authority Less Than 30 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 50,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 30 to 35 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 100,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 36 to 40 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 250,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 41 to 45 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 500,000 Google Results
Domain Authority 46 to 50 = Keyword Phrases with Less than 1,000,000 Google Results

My blog has domain authority of 44. If I spend my time writing posts on keyword phrases with less than 500,000 Google results, then I am going to consistently get high Google rankings for every post I publish. The screenshot below shows the simplicity of how to choose the right keyword phrase.

If you’d like to dive even deeper into keyword strategies, check out the “5 Long Tail Keyword Research Tactics that Every Blogger Should Master.”

Posted By

Brandon Gaille

Brandon Gaille is an AdSense publisher. You can learn more about Brandon at BrandonGaille.com and listen to his popular blogging podcast, The Blog Millionaire.

If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Source: Inside AdSense

Global Spotlight: India presents big opportunities for publishers

More and more users from all over the world are gaining access to information online. For current AdSense publishers, this presents an opportunity to grow your audience globally. Our Global Spotlight series is designed to help educate, inspire, and provide you with insights into how you can grow your business and share your content in emerging markets.

Our last spotlight shared insights on how to capture the opportunity in Indonesia. This week, we turn our lens on India, a nation with a population of over 1 billion people and 22 official languages (not including English). Check out our last post on how and why you should create content in Hindi.

Expanding your content strategy to India may spice up your earnings. Not only does India deliciously produce over 70% of all the world’s spices, but according to eMarketer, it’s on pace to add more new mobile phone users than any other country in the world. Projections say that India will have 570M users online by 20201, and more than half of those users will be accessing the internet via a smartphone.

This explosion in online user growth has been estimated by eMarketer to result in more than a 3x growth in online ad spend in India ($700M in 2015 and forecasted to be $2.5bn by 2020)2. What does this mean for you? A big opportunity to expand your business into India.

In our next few blog posts, we’ll be sharing with you a 3-step strategy to start expanding your business to India, or building a new site for an Indian audience. The first step has 3 tips to get started.

Use Google’s research tools to create relevant content.
Learn the demographics of India’s population.
Apply Google’s micro-moments to your strategy.

If you’re new to monetization, sign up for AdSense and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit by adding AdSense ads to your site so you can focus on your content. After all, content is king.

The first tip we’d like to look at is how and why you as publisher should do research.

When you know what users are talking about, you can participate in the conversation. But the online world moves quickly, so if you want to keep the crowds coming back to your site, your content needs to move with it.

First, use Google’s research tools to create relevant content. Start with Google Trends. You can pinpoint hot topics based on user search trends.

Second, think with Google, literally. This article will help interpret the demographics of India’s population.

Third, learn about Google’s micro-moments and apply them to your strategy. Don’t let another moment pass.

What do you think?

Are you ready to grow your business in India? If so, why stop there? Around the world, people are using AdSense to help them do more of what they love. Turn your #PassionIntoProfit today and sign up for Google AdSense.

Do you want to hear more from us about successfully monetizing your content in India? We regularly host live Hangout on Air sessions to talk through best practices and ways to grow your business. Be sure to register for our next live session on November 17th, 2016.

Tomorrow we’ll be sharing the second part of our 3-step strategy on how to start expanding your business to India, so stay tuned and check out the other posts from our Global Spotlight series!

Posted by Jay Castro, from the AdSense team

Footnotes:

eMarketer, Worldwide Internet and Mobile Users: eMarketer’s Updated Estimates and Forecast for 2015–2020, October 11, 2016

eMarketer, Digital Ad Spending in Asia-Pacific, by Country, 2015-2020 (billions), September 12, 2016

Source: Inside AdSense

Infographic: Get the free All-In-One Policy Compliance Guide

We’ve shared that high quality content and consistency are key ingredients to earning and maintaining the trust of online users. What about maintaining the trust of your ad networks so that you can continue to earn revenue? For AdSense, it’s important to protect the interests of everyone in the online ecosystem, including our users, our advertisers, and our publishers. This focus on maintaining a healthy balance is the reason we set strict policies about AdSense for everyone in the ecosystem to follow.

Your feedback helped us realize that some publishers may be confused by some of our policies, which is why we’re launching a series of blog posts, infographics, new notifications, access to customer support, and #AskAdSense office hours to help increase transparency about AdSense policy processes. We hope that these insights can help turn your #PassionIntoProfit and grow your business as you focus on your users and provide unique content.

We have found that there are two types of publishers who receive AdSense policy violations. The first are publishers who unintentionally violate AdSense policies. For those, we hope that increased transparency into our policy processes can decrease these unintentional violations and help our publishers play by the rules. The second are publishers who intentionally bypass our rules, ending up with a variety of violations. That’s why we work hard to maintain a policy compliant ecosystem for our publishers, advertisers, and users. In short, if you play by the rules, AdSense is here to help you grow your business.

Policy compliant sites with unique content attract advertisers who are willing to spend more money and allow users to enjoy friendly web experiences. So without further ado, here’s your All-In-One Policy Compliance Guide. Download it, print it out, and hang it at your desk for reference. In the coming weeks, we’ll dive into policy topics to provide additional context and insights.

Part 1: Top triggers of policy violation warnings
Part 2: Did you receive a policy violation warning?
Part 3: Best practices for keeping your account in good standing

As always, we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback and invite you to join the conversation with us on Twitter and Google+.

Posted by: Anastasia Almiasheva from the AdSense team

[Get the high resolution version here]

Source: Inside AdSense

3 tips to make your content easy to consume

Over the last month we’ve taken a look at what makes strong content including topics, length, and shareability. But telling a good story is only half of the process. You also have to present it in an easy-to-digest format for today’s distracted audience.

According to a Think With Google study, “67% of users will switch [to another site or app] if it takes too many steps to purchase or get desired information.” Different forms of media can greatly improve your content’s appeal, if it’s used strategically. With people giving less and less time to the things they read online, it’s up to you to keep visitors engaged and entertained. The following tips will help give your content a stronger impact.

1. Share your content visually

Whether it’s lists, infographics, images, gifs, or video, adding in dynamic elements to your story telling will keep things fresh and memorable. Visuals highlight your key points, and leave a greater impact on both loyal and new visitors alike. In fact, sites with video have been proven to encourage an extra 2 minutes of time on page compared to sites that don’t.

2. Break things up

Images can be a great way to break up long text. Unbroken, continuous text is time-consuming to read and can make visitors “check out” prematurely; no matter how interesting the topic is. By breaking up a longer content piece with related imagery, you can increase the chances of you audience staying to read more, and hopefully, fulfill a desired action on your site.

3. Make it Social

Seeing how “liked” or “shared” an article is naturally prompts visitors to share their opinion on it, too. Social proof is a powerful influencer when it comes to users engaging with your content. Ways to gain social proof include providing like actions, sharing actions, and even custom actions such as testimonials and reviews.

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro
Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro

Source: Inside AdSense

Content is king

Publishers are constantly faced with the question of how to balance content and ads to provide the best possible experience for your users. And as you might have found, there’s no easy one-size-fits-all approach. Every site and app is different, with different types of content, objectives, and users, which means that balancing content and ads will look different from publisher to publisher. When faced with this challenge, it’s important to ensure that you give your users what they're looking for in a format that’s easy to find and navigate, and this includes the ads on your page or app.

Here are a few tips to help you balance ads and content.

1. Content is king.
Your content is the reason users are visiting your site or app. If you think about it, your users are visiting your site for a reason, whether they are looking for a recipe, how to build a birdhouse, or trying to find out what’s happening in their town. By providing them with the information they're looking for, you satisfy their need in the moment that they need it the most. Check out this blog post to learn more about winning these micro-moments.

2. Design your site or app around the user journey.

By making your content the focal point on the page, and following standard web best practices, you can create a site that's visually appealing and easy for your users to use and navigate. Check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement for best practices on designing user journeys, not just web pages.

3. Use ads to complement your site or app.
Ads should always supplement the content on your site, not the other way around. So when you’re placing ad units on your site, consider the user journey and how the ad format will complement your site and provide value for your users. If you want ads to look more natural, and match the feel of your content, consider using native ad units. For example, news and article publishers could consider using the native-style format called Matched content at the bottom of each article to direct readers to other relevant content on the same site. This strategy can help grow readership and your ad business.

4. Test, test, test and test again.

At the end of the day, data will be your source of truth. If you’re considering implementing new ad units, run an AdSense experiment to see how they perform. Also, test the different formats to see what works best for your users and your page.

Remember, content is king and it’s the most important thing to users on your site. So you should always have more content than ads on each page. For more information and best practices, head over to the AdSense Help Center or join our next #AskAdSense office hours on Twitter and Google+.

Posted by: John Brown, Publisher Policy Communications Lead

googblogs.com

All Google blogs and Press in one site

Tag Archives: Content strategy